Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book with no obligation to review.

I was not keen on this book. I thought it was slow and inconsequential, I had problems remembering who was who and I felt that the characters were quite thinly drawn..

It is a quick read though. I was thinking of giving up on it but I noticed I was 68% through so I carried on and it does improve from around 75% when things get quite tense from that point until the end.. The most interesting character was Dev and i feel there could be more said about him and how things turn out for him.

I have since discovered that the author is very much admired for his short stories and perhaps that is why the book does not work (for me, anyway) as a novel.

Set over the course of a weekend, this debut novel by Colin Barrett explores a world of small-town criminality and petty drug-dealing in a rural Mayo community. It's not a subject matter that I would be naturally drawn to but Colin Barrett writes with such a unique turn of phrase that it's impossible not to become captivated by the world he creates. With a tight cast of characters and pervading sense of tension, isolation and underlying violence, Wild Houses is a book that could easily feel claustrophobic and overwhelming were it not for the dark humour and sharp, engaging dialogue throughout. Not the easiest of reads at times, but highly recommended nonetheless.

Dev lives alone in his dead mum’s house when the Ferdia brothers turn up at his door with Doll, the brother of local drug dealer Cillian. Doll’s girlfriend Nicky doesn’t know he’s been kidnapped yet but she’s starting to worry about him. This pings between Dev & Nicky and takes place over the course of a big weekend in Ballina.

The way this book is so tense and the tension is broken with humour in all the right places is just brilliantly done. You think that nothing bad will ever really happen to Doll but are never quite certain. There is so much going on but there is also so much space for Dev & Nicky’s interior worlds. It feels both quiet and loud. lol what a dumb and boring thing to say. But it’s true!

How lucky am I that my last book of the year was so good? I did have a hunch that I would love it but you never know! Thrilled that I have two whole short story collections to go back and read now. Man, what a debut though.

Colin Barrett's debut is a beautifully written, incisive and character driven detailed picture of the ordinariness of rural life, the drug trade and criminality in West Ireland and the suffocating, claustrophobic small town community of Ballina, over a period of a few crucial days. The Salmon Festival is taking place, devastating explosive violence and brutality is set to rear its ugly head. Teen Donal 'Doll' English hero worships his wastrel of an older brother, Cillian, a terror who immersed his young self in fights, thieving, drink and upon being thrown out of school, moved from recreationally abusing drugs to selling them, operating a wild house of partying at his girlfriend's home.

However, the wild house has come to an end when Cillian lost a quantity of drugs for which Mulrooney is seeking financial recompense, but despite beatings Cillian has failed to cough up the cash. This has brothers Gabe and Sketch Ferdia abduct Doll in an effort to 'persuade' him. A grieving, lonely Dev Hendrick lives alone in the remote countryside, seeing no-one, a vulnerable big man with a history of never standing up for himself, being bullied, then facing complete indifference at school, then the loss of his mother that triggers him into leaving his factory employment. The Ferdia brothers bring Doll to his home where they have insinuated themselves, an intrusion he knows will ensure that nothing will ever be the same again. The Ferdias are volatile, unable to control or understand their dangerous impulses.

Barratt excels in painting a distinctive picture of time, family, community, and location, and there is skilful depth in the creation of his characters that ring with authenticity, as he adroitly reveals the connections that drive and emerge between them, including the orphan 17 year old Nicky Hennigan, Doll's girlfriend, who gets drawn into the whole sinister affair, with a educational future that offers the lifeline of leaving her current life behind. There is a menace that drives the tightly knit narrative but the chilling bleakness never overwhelms, there is a wit and dark humour that enthralls, captivates and engages. This will appeal to a wide range of readers, particularly those who enjoy exquisitely written Irish literature. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Wild Houses is a modest novel of deadly quietness. Its story is unique in its focus and scope: Ballina, west of Ireland, where a kidnapped teenage boy, Doll, is carried to a house and held captive for three days. The plot revolves around the central rupture of this occurrence, with practically every character caught in its grip. There's Dev, the man who brings the youngster to his house; Nicky, the boy's girlfriend; Cillian, his older brother; and Sheila, his mother. The novel's narrow focus also emphasises the essence of its setting: how its characters, even if they don't know one other, are inextricably linked in each other's lives.


Liability is an important topic in a novel about violence, as it is in Wild Houses. Barrett walks a fine line here, balancing the story's extreme violence--a boy kidnapped and held hostage--with the mundane, as absorbed into the environment and its rhythms. Culpability and complicity become hazy concerns when everything "twists together" so quickly, when interconnection becomes a liability. To act for someone is to act against someone else; but, not acting at all is a form of complicity that achieves the same result. It's also worth noting that this violence occurs in the countryside. The Wild Houses countryside is not one of idyll and calm, but of dread, the breadth of its landscapes a kind of blanket that, in its grandeur, can absorb and eclipse violence.

Just as violence pervades Wild Houses, so does loneliness, and the novel's description of that loneliness is both poignant and tragic. Characters are grieving, separated, and isolated; in a tragic twist, the novel's key event draws them together. Dev's narrative, one of our two narrators, particularly impacted me. Barrett's description of his mental health issues, particularly his panic attacks, is intensely felt on the page, as are his loneliness and sadness. There are several words at the end of this story that are simply magnificent in every way. They are precisely what I mean when I say that this novel is quietly terrible.

Clearly skilfully written, but just not to my taste. It wasn’t a style of writing I enjoyed. A DNF, but in this instance, blaming the reader not the writer.

This book – the debut novel of an award winning short story writer - fits for me firmly into a broad genre that I have christened Craic Cocaine – literary fiction, written with a mixture of crackling dialogue, quirkily vibrant descriptions (here for example “with a face on him like a vandalised church, long and angular and pitted, eyes glinting deep in their sockets like smashed-out windows”), black humour and violence. The books are often billed as about the Irish working classes but really seem to conflate that with the Irish criminal (and particularly drug dealing) classes.

Examples would include Lisa McInerney’s Cork City Trilogy (particularly “Blood Miracles”), Kevin Barry’s “Night Boat To Tangier” and Luke Cassidy’s “Iron Annie” and I think this would appeal to fans of any of those books – although in each case I think I was out of line with the general acclaim for them.

This one has a simple set up and tight cast: Dev Hendrick, something of a giant but still a victim of bullying at school, now lives on his own in his remote family home since the death of his mother (his father having long since been committed to a local psychiatric care facility). Some time ago Gabe and Sketch Ferdia - the two enforcers of the local drug baron instructed him they were going to use his house as a contraband storage area. Now, they turn up at his doorstep with Doll – the battered and bruised brother of Cillian English, a small-time dealer who has fallen foul of their boss for losing (he claims in a flood) a stash of drugs and not paying the money back. Frustrated at Cillian’s seeming obliviousness to personal beatings they decide seizing his brother may force him to cough up the money. The other main character is Nicky – Doll’s seventeen year old orphaned girlfriend – who finds herself drawn after she is visited by a Ferdia in the hotel bar where she works to pass on the ultimatum to Cillian.

And the remainder of the book is set over a weekend as the incident plays out.

The strongest parts of the book for me were the characters of Dev (struggling with long term mental health issues himself and somewhat directionless in life and Nicky, equally unsure where her future lies and how she feels about Doll but this is not really a genre that works for me.